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Speaker: Tim O'Brien, Research Fellow at the Center for International Development at Harvard University
About the Talk: In 2009, Sri Lanka emerged from a nearly 30-year conflict and entered a short period of accelerated economic growth. In January 2015, in a surprise result, the Sri Lankan people voted out of office an increasingly autocratic President who was widely credited with ending the civil war. The new government promised institutional reform to deliver good governance and achieve reconciliation, but they also soon discovered that Sri Lanka's economic growth was built on a fundamentally unsustainable foundation.
At the invitation of the Government of Sri Lanka, CID began economic research in the country in late 2015, with a focus of understanding how growth could be made more sustainable and more inclusive. Tim O’Brien will talk about CID’s ongoing work in Sri Lanka, focusing on how CID applied the growth diagnostic framework in practice, several of the main findings, how project activities were informed by the findings, and some of the results that can be partially attributed to CID’s work so far.
About the Speaker: Tim O’Brien joined the Center for International Development in 2015, working on both Growth Lab and Building State Capability projects. He has led growth diagnostic research in Albania and Sri Lanka. Tim holds a Master in Public Administration in International Development (MPA/ID) degree from the Harvard Kennedy School and a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Northwestern University. Tim served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Malawi from 2008-2010 and has experience working with the World Bank and in environmental engineering. Tim’s research interests center on the challenges of economic transformation and adapting to climate change in developing countries and vulnerable communities.